Thom Yorke reveals all about solo album

Thom Yorke has revealed that his forthcoming solo album ‘The Eraser’ was conceived as an escape from Radiohead, at a time when he grew bored of the Oxford band.

The album, which is released on July 10 through XL Records, contains 9 solo tracks and was produced by Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich.

It began life after Radiohead completed their 2004 tour for ‘Hail To The Thief’ when the band were emotionally and psychologically drained.

“I don’t think anybody really slept for ,like, three, four weeks. So that level of sleep deprivation and doing these big shows under lots of pressure…It was really messed up,” he told the Observer Music Monthly.

“[Radiohead were] getting boring and it just got a bit weird…It felt like everyone was under obligation to do it rather than because we wanted to do it. And one of the things I had wanted to do for ages was get stuck into a bunch of things that I had been mucking around with that didn’t fit into the Radiohead zone.”

The singer explained that ‘The Eraser’ was “an accumulation of really sketchy ideas that were going around since I learnt how to use the laptop properly. I was excited about the idea of just using beats and stuff and some of these sound that I had.”

Yorke also discussed the fact that the album would be released on the XL label rather than Radiohead‘s label EMI.

Sharethrough (Mobile)

“It didn’t feel right to do it with EMI,” he said. “It was done with the doors shut. As Nigel [Godrich] said, without anybody watching. And it was done in a different context so it felt like it should be put out in a different context.”

On the question of whether Radiohead would work with EMI again or not, Yorke said: “[It’s not like] we won’t put things out through EMI or whatever. I just don’t personally feel that we owe anybody anything. I think that’s a mistake. Will we re-sign to EMI? I don’t know. I don’t think we’d ‘sign’ sign to anybody. Give someone a record when it’s done if we feel that they can do it justice. That’s it.”